Hey, I'm Kate Lindsay, and you're listening to I-C-Y-M-I, or in case you missed it,

Slate's podcast about internet culture.

And today on the show, we are joined once again by Aidan Walker, an internet culture researcher and meme historian.

Welcome back to the show, Aiden.

Super happy to be on the show and to start 2026 off on a good foot with you.

Yeah, I know.

This is a good, the good vibes episode for us to start, because, you know, we record, this is the first episode we're recording in 2026. How was your new year? How was your holiday? I got the flu in that like middle period between Christmas and New Year, so I'm still recovering, but... I guess that's the best time to get it. If you had to pick a time, that's the time when nothing's going on.

Yeah, the liminal period of the year.

Yes.

Well, one of our final episodes in 2025 was about the top Internet moments of the year, but now it is 2026.

We are done reflecting.

And so, Aidan, I know, I know it's early. I'm curious from someone who's in this space,

has the first meme of 2026 happened? Or is there anything you're keeping an eye on that might

become a bigger thing? Or is it still too early to tell? So it's still a little bit too early to tell.

I think this last weekend memes do tend to kind of take off on weekends because people are on

their phones, if there's any pattern I've seen there.

Nothing really jumped out of me.

Like I said, though, I was kind of sick the whole time, but usually I'm watching the

niches pretty closely. And I would say that

we're due for another thing like gloving, like some other hyper-specific niche. Oh, wait, yes. Okay,

I came very late to gloving. Can you please tell us about gloving? Well, in the gloving community,

they know that this has been going on for years and years. You know, you go to a rave and

...